


Untitled Solas and Merrill

by padawanhilary



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Possible AU to Dragon Age Elf Canon, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 21:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18225770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/padawanhilary/pseuds/padawanhilary
Summary: Solas shows Merrill something she needed to see.





	Untitled Solas and Merrill

“It’s Andraste,” said Merrill, eyeing the head of the staff. She and Solas were in their camp, examining the items they’d found in the cache nearest a giant’s clearing. 

The staff was a deep golden color, not quite bronze, and depicted a woman, arms outstretched. Behind her was a shape very similar to the Circle insignia, only upside down. “She’s pretty. Sebastian wouldn’t like this one, though.”

Pausing in his inspection of the staff, Solas turned to her and asked, “Why wouldn’t he?” It had been his understanding from the stories that Sebastian had been quite the Chantry devotee. To a fault, depending on who was telling the story. 

“Because she’s naked,” Merrill pointed out with a little shrug. “He’d avert his eyes and say something like, ‘Maker’s breath, wrap a cloth around her.’” Her Sebastian imitation wasn’t terrible.

“That is only one reason it is _not_ Andraste.” Solas held the staff, point in the dirt, his grip on it about waist high. He slowly passed his hand around the sculpted decoration. “It is actually Mythal.” His fingers twitched slightly as he felt the aura of spirit magic infused through the wood and metal. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing to the circle with its arms pointing upward. “Look how open it is. Facing upward, it is meant to be a symbol of receiving her love and wisdom - a cup of the soul, which Mythal fills.”

“But it looks just like the banners outside the Kirkwall Circle,” Merrill argued. She knew deep down that she was eventually going to bow under his infuriatingly correct deluge of answers, as she almost always did. It made her want to dig her heels in even harder.

“Never let it be said that the Chantry has not excelled at co-opting elven symbolism for its own,” Solas replied darkly. “It made their oppression easier, coming as it did under the pretense of guidance and protection.”

Merrill threw her hands up and sighed. “Why do you always have to be right? Do you practice?”

Solas leveled a gaze at her. “I do not _have_ to be right,” he corrected. “If I am, then it is a simple fact. There is no practice involved, only knowledge.” 

“But how?” She sat down by the fire, knees bent up in front of her and arms wrapped around them, feeling a little petulant. She didn’t like feeling this way, and he always brought it out in her in a way that even Keeper Marethari had never achieved. 

Merrill asked a question she already had on a dozen occasions, one he had never properly answered: “Who taught you? The Fade isn’t a teacher. You’ve said yourself that memories are subjective there, and you were never a Keeper. You were never even a First.” 

“It never fails to amaze me.” Solas shook his head, turning the staff to view it from another angle. “You seem very determined to continue to believe that they hold all of the knowledge you claim to seek, despite having been shown the contrary. A spoonful of food in an otherwise empty bowl does not make a meal.” He laid the staff reverently against his bedroll so that the fine details of the work would not touch the dirt, and he moved to crouch beside Merrill in front of the fire. “I am trying to teach you.” 

“It seems more like you’re trying to lecture me,” she said, not meeting his gaze. The fire didn’t have judgmental eyes and impatience. 

Solas tilted his head, seeking her attention, and when she finally gave it, he said, “I understand that you’re frustrated. It must be difficult to have everything you’ve ever known proven wrong.”

“Not _everything,_ ” she countered. 

“Many things,” he amended, and when her expression became wary - he was humoring her, and she knew it - he sighed and amended again, “most things.” 

“I know how to skin a rabbit and cook stew.” Merrill tipped her chin up just a bit in defiance.

“And you are a better cook than I,” he replied, “and no one can take that from you.” 

“You’re doing it again.” 

“I’m doing what?” 

“Condescending.” These days, Merrill understood all of those times Fenris had barked at her about her own. “Trying to make me happy about something you think is silly and pointless.” 

“It is not silly and pointless. Whatever you believe, whatever I know, we will always have to eat.” 

That gave him a thought. It was one he’d had before and discarded quickly, but now he held onto it a moment, turning it over and over. She had only beliefs, and they were all being torn down, picked at as though by ravens - little pieces lost here and there, day by day.

Only slightly mollified, Merrill tilted her head in a not-quite-nod. She saw it as his way of patting her gently so she’d hush for a while, and she hated it a little. When she finally looked up at him again, there was naked longing in her eyes. There was so much he wasn’t telling her, but why not? Because she'd fought him every step of the journey. 

Only it _was_ difficult to be shown that your way had never truly been correct, that all of the elves were wrong in some aspect or another. The Keepers knew the ways and the lore - badly, apparently - and the Firsts were learning in their way to relay them. The Dalish people themselves shared this same dusty, watered down remembrance amongst their children and grandchildren, getting further from the truth with every passing generation. 

An alienage hahren, as elevated as she was, could perhaps explain how to skin a rabbit, but likely could not do it herself. Her City Elves could only buy one already skinned with the very rare coin they were given for whatever hard tasks they accomplished for the shemlen. 

They mostly ate gruel, anyway. This rendered the whole discussion, as Solas would say, academic.

Perhaps it wasn’t so cut-and-dried as all that, but it still made Merrill want to cry.

~ ~ ~ ~

He hadn’t wanted to do it this way. It would be sudden and jarring and could damage their burgeoning friendship and her connection to the ways even further.

Solas could see it, though: Merrill’s deep sorrow for her perceived loss of the completeness of her history was hindering her ability to learn, so… here they were. 

They stood in the clearing at the base of Sundermount, the clan bustling around them. Master Ilen was working intently on a large piece of ironwood, bringing a bow out of it, or perhaps the hilts of several daggers. Keeper Marethari was telling a story to a group of children. Pol was shooting arrows into a makeshift target, hitting the center every time to the sound of quiet cheering from onlookers. Off in the distance, one of the elders was beginning the ritual for the mixing of vallaslin. 

Merrill breathed in the air and closed her eyes, relishing the life music of her people. 

“We’re here so that I can show you something,” Solas told her, gesturing around. “Think about this, Merrill. Think about where we are.”

“Oh, I know where we are,” she said readily enough. “We’re in the Fade. There’s a lesson here. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a moment of peace among those I’ve lost.” She looked around her, remembering, and pressed her palm against her chest as if to ease an ache there. “It’s been a very long road,” she sighed. 

“I know,” Solas said, and for once, the words didn’t bring that tired look of resignation to her eyes. She watched him expectantly. When he held out a hand, she took it - 

The world exploded around them in a dizzying green and golden blast. They were spinning momentarily, her hand tucked firmly in his, and Merrill could _see._

She could see the spirit that she had wished to help her repair the eluvian - one of vision and wisdom - waiting in the dark, waiting what seemed an eternity, bound into that fetish in the little Sundermount cave. She could feel its anguish and rage at being denied its ability to bask in knowledge and share for so long - so long - and suddenly she understood that she had done that. She had blamed the Keeper for taking on a burden that should have been her own, but the burden should never have been at all. Merrill had been told that, of course, several times, but now she _felt._

As deep as the spirit’s anguish had been, it could not compare to the pain that Marethari had endured when taking that spirit into herself. The Keeper had invited it and had briefly understood the flash of relief and anticipation that it offered, but it had immediately turned inside her, melding with her, digging prideful, arrogant claws and teeth into the softest meat of her soul. 

When it had died - when Merrill had killed it - it had simply ceased. 

Now she understood that what she’d done could be likened to engraving powerful runes with a child’s wax writing stick. Void take you if the stick broke and the precision of the rune was marred - and it would be.

Solas made a small gesture, not because it meant anything to the magic but so that she could see they were moving on. Through the failed eluvian into a gleaming, labyrinthine crossroads, and somehow, she could see every entrance and exit and what lay beyond them. Upward. Outward, into the supernal energy of the gods themselves. Merrill marveled as worlds flashed by - no, not worlds, but eternities. Peoples. The space of time. She felt deep, ancient magics thrumming through her, filling her very blood and bones with wisdom that made her paltry understanding of things appear as rudimentary as a child’s first halting steps. She saw great cities and nations, a glowing, ethereal realm of patient soundness, where and when a month-long gesture created a century-long feast of pleasure and calm and soft, slow-spoken delight.

The majesty of it bloomed in her chest, filling her with an ecstasy and a mourning that healed and broke her heart at once. She turned to Solas, and saw with her eyes what her heart now knew: who he was. What he was. She could feel his change before he began it, the shadow of the Dread Wolf a picture in her mind before it manifested before her stare. 

They spun through the realms like stars, and he showed her what would be her destiny - what _should_ be her destiny: by his side among a sage council woven through with the power of the deities, leading their people to the future they once had.

~ ~ ~ ~

When she woke, tears streaming down her temples and into her hair, he sat beside her, watching her. She could feel his gaze, but could not meet it.

“I didn’t know,” she breathed, staring into the stars. “I didn’t know -” The name Elgar’nan nearly slipped out, but she realized with deep shame that her epithets, her methods, had all been _wrong_. “I beg your forgiveness, Fen’harel. I didn’t know.” 

He cupped her cheek and tilted her head toward him. “And now you do,” he said softly. “Join me.” 

She knew in her heart that she could do nothing, nothing, if not that. 

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was given a prompt on a Facebook thread involving Solas, Merrill, and a staff. It got a little away from me. 
> 
> This has not been beta-read. 
> 
> The staff is the one in the middle of this image: https://66.media.tumblr.com/008001610aacb3b96116e881ac9ebb96/tumblr_njd20l5CBR1rq9btxo3_1280.png 
> 
> I don't own any of this *makes expansive gesture to indicate every friggin' thing*


End file.
